US Fitness Guide

Healthy gut flora microorganisms living in the digestive tract of animals can reduce the risk of obesity, a study says.

The study, done on rats, showed that daily intake of a lactic acid bacteria, which has been given the name Lactobacillus plantarum HEAL19, appears to be able to prevent obesity and reduce the bodys low-level inflammation.

Rats who were given this specific lactic acid bacterium from their time in the uterus up to adult age put on significantly less weight than other rats. Both groups ate the same amount of high-energy food, explains Caroline Karlsson, researcher in food hygiene at Lund University, Sweden.

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“When the U.S. military has to turn to fitness gurus like Tony Horton to help its soldiers slim down, you know obesity is a serious problem,” said Gerald Weissmann, M.D., Editor-in-Chief of The FASEB Journal, “and all you have to do is visit to a nursing home to see the devastating effects of osteoporosis. “Sprouty” -well named- gets to the roots of extra fat and shrinking bone.”

To make this discovery, the researchers studied two groups of transgenic mice, one group with a genetic deletion of the Sprouty gene in cells that develop into fat and bone, and the second group with high levels of expressed Sprouty proteins in the same cell types.

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